7 Things You Should Know About Bottled Water

Water
is essential to the survival of every life form. People who work in hot
climates need to drink up to 16 litres of
water daily to control body temperature and stay hydrated.

But,
did you know that even though the recommended average is 2-3 litres per day, 95% of Americans drink only 1 litre of water?

Considering
the importance of water and our sole reliance on its benefits, it is not
surprising to find that we like it clean, pure, and tasty. This is the reason a
lot of people spend so much money buying filters to purify water.

Conventional
water filters are too large to bring out with you as you go about your daily
activities so you can only use them at home; this presents the question “what
do you when you’re thirsty and away from home?” The average American would prefer
to buy a bottle of water at the grocery store or just drink from water
fountains rather than carrying a bottle of water everywhere.

Bottled
water use keeps increasing in the USA. According to a report by Beverage
Marketing Corporation, the USA utilizes more bottled water than any country
except China. Beverage companies have earned fortunes by merely selling bottled
water on the assertion that it’s “pure,” from “unspoiled, natural sources,” and
hence is safer than tap water. Campaigns for bottled water have been so successful
in making people wary of tap water that sales have increased over 700 percent
between 1997 and 2005. The environmental degradation, landfill waste, and human
rights abuses associated with bottled water are on the rise as well.

Research,
however, has shown that bottled water is no safer than tap water.(1) Drinking water in the US can even be
considered dangerous due to local groundwater contamination, old infrastructure
like pipes that leach heavy metals or chemicals into drinking water, or from lack
of disinfection that allows bacteria and viruses to proliferate. In fact,
drinking water in the USA is thought to cause more than a million cases of stomach
sickness every year.(2) This level of contamination is 559
times higher than the EPA acceptable standard for drinking water.

These
reports of drinking tainted water might have some people running to the water
aisle of the nearest grocery store, something that should alarm
environmentalists. At Santevia we always suggest using a point of use filter,
like an alkaline water pitcher at home, and an on-the-go filter, like the Power
Stick when you are out. It is much better for the environment because it
doesn’t contribute to plastic waste, is less expensive than buying bottled
water, and will keep you hydrated throughout the day.

1.Bottled
Water has Unique Guidelines

The
bottled water industry is worth more than $170 billion dollars and North
Americans are some of its most enthusiastic consumers purchasing more than both
milk and beer in the US.

Bottled water is not subject to milk and
beer guidelines because it is classified as a food and falls under the Food and
Drugs Act.

Aside from arsenic, coliform, and lead,
the Food act does not place limits on specific contaminants but simply says
that food products are not allowed to contain "poisonous or harmful
substances" and must be prepared in hygienic conditions.

2. Water
Quality Monitoring In the Industry Is Voluntary

A study in 2009 by the Polaris
Institute, an Ottawa-based non-profit environmental advocacy group, found that
in the water bottling industry, monitoring of water quality is considered
"essentially voluntary and internally regulated."

Tap water is subject to more thorough
water quality guidelines than bottled water.

Producers of bottled water claim they carry
out a degree of testing that is comparable to that done in municipalities, but
the results are not made public — even if some companies do post sample water
quality analysis online.

Efforts have been made to initiate more
thorough bottled water guideline. But it has proved futile, leaving the
industry to regulate itself.

3.Bottle
Water Labels give Limited Information

Bottle water labels on spring and
mineral water do not indicate the water source even when it is obvious that
some are sourced from town water supplies.

Bottled water has made its way into
every part of the modern society and the industry still growing rapidly is
estimated to be worth more than $170 billion.

In the U.S., Nestlé's Poland Spring
water, was made subject of a class-action lawsuit that suspected that the
company was mislabeling its water as "naturally purified" spring
water from "pristine and protected sources... deep in the woods of
Maine," when in reality the water
was sourced from groundwater obtained
from man-made wells some of which were at risk of pollution.

They never gave in; instead, the suit was settled out of court in
2003. The company agreed to pay 10 million US dollars in charitable donations, customer
discounts and agreed to step up
water-quality monitoring.

4. There are clear health risks

Diseases associated with bottled water are
rare; however, like tap water, bottled water can be contaminated. The Polaris
Institute discovered that 29 out of 49 bottled water products have been
recalled; this was between 2000 and 2009 as a result of contamination (by
contaminants such as bacteria, arsenic, mould
and "extraneous material" like glass).

Some have raised the point that filtered
water that is de-mineralized might deprive those who drink it of the benefits
of essential minerals like magnesium and calcium.

There have also been concerns over the
potential leaching of antimony trioxide, a suspected carcinogen used in the
manufacturing of the polyethylene terephthalate plastic (known as PET or PETE) used
in water bottles, but studies show that the levels found are a health risk.

5.Bottled
Water & Drugs

To enable them to flaunt improved taste, manufacturers use disinfection
and additional treatment processes to reduce potential contaminants which don’t
leave the same odour and taste as the
cheaper chlorine disinfection used by many municipal water treatment systems.

Coca-Cola willingly withdrew up to
500,000 bottles of Dasani water in the U.K. after it found that the levels of
bromate surpassed legal limits.

Treatment methods including UV
disinfection, carbon filtration, ozonation, and
reverse osmosis used to disinfect water also softens the water by removing
naturally occurring minerals like magnesium and calcium in a bid to reduce
heavy metals. The best water filters will remove contaminants from water, then
add healthy minerals, like calcium and magnesium, back into the water.

6. Cost

Bottled water prices can range from
eight cents per 500 ml bottle to $2.50 for high-end brands. Alternatively, the
economics of filtering tap water with a point-of-use filter like a water
pitcher or Santevia Countertop produce very high-quality water and cost just pennies a glass.

7. Environmental impact

Even though companies have tried to
reuse and recycle plastic, significant waste is being generated and energy is
expended in transporting and remanufacturing this waste.

The CBWA says “plastic bottles account
for only one-fifth of one percent of the landfill, but once they’re there, they can take
hundreds of years to decompose and may not decompose at all given that most
landfills don't have enough heat, light, and
oxygen to break down much of anything outside of organic matter”.

Reuse of these bottles can increase the
risk of contamination leading to severe illness. The Pacific Institute, responsible
for research on water use and conservation, has anticipated that bottled water
is up to 2,000 times more energy-intensive than tap water. In 2006 alone, putting water in bottles for
U.S. consumption expended the energy equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil
and produced 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.

CONCLUSION

Bottled
water is often a bad purchase for your wallet and the environment. There are
times when there isn’t access to potable water and so bottled water is the only
option but there are many better solutions than purchasing bottled water on a
daily basis. Often, bottled water is the same water you can expect from a tap,
but is packaged in plastic that may leach harmful contaminants, contributes to
plastic waste, and is transported across the country on gas-powered trucks.
Save yourself money, and the environment from excessive plastic waste by
filtering tap water to remove chlorine and add back healthy minerals with a
Santevia Alkaline Pitcher at home and a Power Stick on-the-go filter while away
from home.